Camping With Kids 101

Here is what I learned during my first real camping trip with two toddlers (and our friends the Christensens) in Capitol Reef National Park.

1. Leaving late is a bad idea. You get to the campground at 11pm, try to set up a new tent the size of Texas, next try to blow up the HUGE air mattress (so big, folks, that it can be turned into couch so you can accept visitors to your tent with style......thanks Jimarie :)), and keep kids from screaming while dodging hurricanes of gnats swarming around your headlamp...trying to do all this QUIETLY so the neighboring campers don't come by and curse you out.

Yeah... that smile belies the lack of sleep...

2. Take friends that are not only kind and helpful but patient beyond belief. Ones that aren't afraid of tantrums, boogers, muddy hands, predatory animals, and putting your kids in time out FOR you. We took some like that, although I just threw in the predatory animals for good measure. I'm sure Tom could take down a bear if he needed to...or at least a large badger. (There WERE a lot of hungry-looking deer...)

Hanging out in the hammock w/ Sarah

3. When kids are camping, dirt suddenly becomes far more appealing to eat than food. Allie went to town on a nice red pile of dirt with her spoon.

Breakfast... and Em actually cooked bacon! We forced Allie to eat something other than dirt.

4. When camping with 18 mo. olds, always bring some sort of rope to tie them down to their beds at night. Otherwise, you watch helplessly as they wander around the tent like a drunkard for at least 30 minutes, bumping, falling, and colliding with everyone and everything until they collapse in an exhausted heap at your feet. And since they were yelling basically the whole time, you are again waiting for the neighbors to come curse you out.

Beware the midget camp monster.

5. Camp Hosts are not nice. For the longest time I have thought how fun it would be to be one of these when Jevan and I get old someday, spending a summer out in the great outdoors (can't you just see Jevan in his RV with a huge cable dish and a golf cart parked outside? Yeah, I know I'm dreaming..but a girl can dream, right?). Now I'm not so sure. I think in order to be considered for the job, you have to grow fangs and contort your face permanently into a gnarly scowl...and smell like smoke and vaseline. We got yelled at for not putting our money in their little box at midnight the first night, thinking we would do it in the morning. Like we make a living out of sneaking in and out of campgrounds without paying, totally unnoticed, with the aforementioned Texas-sized tent and two screaming kids. Honestly, people.

"Lovely day for a match, don't you think dear?"

6. When all else fails, bring out the Cheez-its.

"I will stand on this cooler and scream until SOMEONE gets me some food. Seriously."

7. It's nice to visit desert redrock places when there is a waterfall involved. Although we were already wet from the rain, it was nice to cool off in the big pool and let Jane and Allie build castles in the mud.

Making mud castles.

8. Waterfalls and speedos do not mix. Someone needs to tell this to our European visitors....bless their hearts. They also need to know that going up one size in the speedo so it doesn't climb up your behind is also a good idea.

This might seem like a silly picture of me, but may I please draw your attention to the Euro-cheeks in the background. Yes, my husband took a picture of another man's behind. Feel free to mock him.

Jumping Jane.

9. Never make tinfoil dinners any other way than how Tom & Sarah do it. Ohmigosh..they are so good. Your dinner may very well come out to weigh about 40 pounds and you will eat every bit of it. The secret is drowning your potatoes, carrots and meat in cream of mushroom soup and then putting a layer of wet newspaper in between the layers of tinfoil. So yummy.

Fwends.

LOOK AT THAT FARMER TAN!!! Jevan is hiding his.

10. For those of us who don't have DVD players in the car, make sure you have some good kid tunes. There's a guy named Steve Roslonek (he does Stevesongs on PBS now) that has some really cool songs, and I highly recommend you getting them. However, after 5 hours of them, even the most entertaining of children's music can start to sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Allie likes to bounce. A lot. Almost as much as eating dirt.

11. Take a breather once and a while and enjoy all those wonderful moments of curiosity and discovery as your kids experience the wonders of the natural world. I loved watching Jane and Allie chase bugs, pick juniper berries and wander after the deer in the campground. I have looked forward to this time my whole life - being able to take my kids to all the wonderful forests, deserts and mountains I visited as a kid. I hope to instill a love of the outdoors in my kids like my parents did for me. That means I have to be able to stop every 5 steps to check out the latest bug or funny shaped rock (which if they were anything out of the ordinary were always "seashells" to Jane) and stop worrying if I'm going to actually finish all 2 miles of the trail.

We were the coolest campers there. So cool, in fact, that a strange (and potentially European) couple came and stared at us for the entire time we were there. I think either they were really bored or we were just that interesting. Or they were alien vampires.

In the end, we all came home dusty, exhausted, happy and alive. For those reasons and simply because Jane asked the next morning when we were going camping again, I count the trip as a success.